


It's Almost Halloween

by Merkey666



Series: High School Au [4]
Category: Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, Panic! at the Disco, Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - High School, Bad Ideas, Debauchery, Drug Use, Drunken Flirting, Halloween, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Kissing, Multi, Ouija Boards, Sleepovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-13 02:42:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21236816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merkey666/pseuds/Merkey666
Summary: Tyler hosts a Halloween party and debauchery ensues.





	It's Almost Halloween

**Author's Note:**

> i absolutely condone the usage of drugs and alcohol

It was midway through October and to Tyler, the season has thus far been totally wasted. There had been zero Halloween parties, a distinct lack of scary movie marathons, and he was suspiciously lacking his usual ate-too-much-bagged-candy extra pounds. It was egregious. He’d bobbed for zero apples, gotten lost in zero graveyards, and smashed zero vampires. It was so much of a waste that on the seventeenth of October, he sent out a text to the group-chat to rectify this injustice.

It didn’t sound as glorious as he’d hoped. 

Tyler: what’s up you sad, ugly bitches it is time to get fucking spooky and you know it!!! Sleepover, my house, this Friday

Hayley: I’ve got a final on Friday :(

Tyler: Idgaf Hayley. do u want 2 get fucking spooky or not

Hayley: >:)

So Tyler was tasked with setting up (what ended up being) a haunted house in about four days. It only took several trips to various Spirit stores and an advance on his paycheck for mowing the neighbor’s lawn. By Wednesday he completely gave up on keeping the “lewk” a surprise and called in Josh for assistance. 

Tyler unlocked the front door to his house with Josh in tow. It was hot outside for October, and the low angle of the sun through the trees made the house feel warm but eerie. Tyler tossed his backpack next to the door and shouldered the massive bag of decorations he’d purchased during off-campus lunch. Josh flopped down on the couch, shoes and all. He practically lived there by that point. 

“Okay,” Tyler sighed. He pulled out a bag of fake spider webs. “Where can we hang these that’s NOT a fire hazard?”

“It would be very sexy of you to burn your own house down while Halloween decorating,” Josh replied.

“Very helpful,” Tyler muttered. 

Josh pulled back the curtains, exposing the living room to the whole street. “Maybe across the window? It’d look cool from the sidewalk.”

“If we watch movies the curtains will be closed, otherwise it won’t be dark enough,” Tyler replied. 

“I thought the plan was to get sloshed first, and watch the movies once it gets dark.”

Tyler sighed and looked around. “Yeah, okay.” He hopped up onto the couch and handed Josh the other end of the silk. 

Josh pulled it apart. “Lady and the Tramp: Halloween Edition.” He caught Tyler’s eye.

“Mom? Dad?” Tyler shouted back into the house. No one answered. 

Tyler tugged Josh off of the couch and caught him by the mouth in a dark corner of the room. Tyler dropped the cobweb and hung his arms around Josh’s neck. 

It wasn’t until Tyler’s mom called out, “Tyler? Did you say something?” that they parted. And it was a very sudden and definite part indeed. 

Josh picked back up the faux cobwebs and bolted back onto the sofa. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and prayed that Tyler’s mom was shouting from somewhere far away, like the basement. Did Tyler even have a basement?

“NAH, JUST WONDERING IF YOU WERE HOME!” Tyler shouted back. The tension in his body ebbed away when his mother said nothing more. He sent a look to Josh that had no deeper meaning at all and they got back to work. 

It was a bit of a save that Tyler’s mom was home, since it was unlikely that they would have gotten anything done otherwise. 

“Do you know how to work this thing?” asked Tyler, regarding the ancient projector they’d found in the basement. It turned out that Tyler did have a basement. 

“Uh… no. But it’ll either work or not work, and if it doesn’t, I’m pretty sure it’ll catch on fire,” Josh replied, fiddling with knobs the size of bottle caps.

“Sick,” Tyler replied happily, scooting the couch as far away from the tv as possible, to make room for sleeping bags and whatnot on the floor. Naturally, he’d taken some ideas from the last time everyone had been sharing a space like this, the school camping trip, and that hadn’t gone nearly as badly as he’d anticipated. Not that he assumed furniture layouts had much to do with it anyway. 

“Do you wanna put a rug down? The floor will be pretty hard to lay on, and at Chateau Josh ‘N’ Tosh, all of our guests are treated with the finest—” 

“This is my house, my name goes first,” Tyler interrupted, internally agreeing with the rug suggestion. 

“Yeah, but that doesn’t sound as good, does it? Tosh ‘N’ Josh? Really, Tyler?”

“It sounds the same,” interjected Tyler’s mother. The signature rattle of keys in her purse told Tyler he was definitely about to score. “I’m going to dinner with some old friends. Josh, you’re in charge. Don’t let this—” she gestured to the decorating “— get too out of hand.”

Josh saluted. “Yes, ma’am.”

With a smile and a wave, she shut the front door behind her. 

Tyler waited until he heard the car pull out of the driveway. Then he and Josh bolted to Tyler’s room and locked the door behind them. 

~

Believe it or not, they did get back around to setting up. 

“AW SHIT!” Josh groaned. “It’s Frank’s birthday on the 31st, right?”

“When has he ever let any of us forget that?” 

Josh made a good point face. “We can’t let him make this party about him. That totally defeats the point.”

Tyler smiled in a lop-sided way. “I know what you mean but I’m pretty sure “the point” of this party is to get shitfaced and then scared out of our minds. With a splash of debauchery.”

Josh quieted and fluffed a pillow passive aggressively. 

A stroke of genius struck Tyler. “Wait.” 

Josh turned. 

“I have an idea.”

And that was the last piece of the puzzle. On Friday after school, everyone marched to Tyler’s house with backpacks full of Whiteclaw and mason jars full of weed. Lindsey and Gerard chainsmoked the entire way. Tyler and Hayley were on equal standing, thinking that that was fucking disgusting, but they weren’t really fit to judge.

They led the pack in order to stay out of the smoke. 

“What are the cupcakes for?” Hayley asked. 

Tyler was holding a large plastic box of premade Halloween cupcakes. He hadn’t added the final touch yet. “You’ll see in a little bit.”

Hayley nodded. “I really hope your house doesn’t get trashed.”

“Oh, it will. It’s inevitable. But my parents are out of town doing some corporate shit this weekend so I’m home alone. They kinda had to figure.”

“Lucky,” Hayley said, leaning against the front of Tyler’s house. “I’d do shit like this if I weren’t too busy being the mom-friend. Even my parents know I’m the mom friend, so if I ever had a party I’d end up more disappointed in my actions than they would be.”

Tyler laughed and tried to worm his keys out of his pocket. Eventually Josh found him pitiful enough to warrant getting the keys out of Tyler’s pocket for him. Tyler shot him a thankful look and returned to Hayley. “Speaking of responsibility, how was your final?”

Hayley took her sweet time looking back and forth between Tyler and Josh. “Good,” she said; and without missing a beat followed it up with, “hey, are you and Josh fucking? It seems like you are.”

Tyler almost dropped two dozen cupcakes on his stairwell. “What?” 

Hayley seemed hesitant to repeat her question and luckily she didn’t have to. Tyler heard her good and clear the first time. 

“Can we talk about this once I’m shitfaced? Please?”

Hayley patted him on the back gently and the two of them went inside. The door shut behind them on its own and Tyler took that as a good omen for the evening. Spooky happenings were already afoot. 

The decorating was a smashing success. All the lighting was deep purple now, almost like a black-light. Cobwebs were draped across the windows and there was caution tape across the door to the kitchen. One literally had to duck under it in order to get in. There were fake pumpkins everywhere and the whole house smelled violently of pumpkin spice. 

And naturally, the living room was already a mess. There was not enough furniture for the amount of people there and definitely not enough ice for the drinks. What really set him off, though, was that they’d only been inside for a minute and Gerard and Frank were already making out in the corner. Tyler felt like all 31 nights Halloween were happening at once. 

He found Josh in the kitchen, digging icing out of the fridge. 

“So I only found white but I’m sure you’ve got red food coloring here somewhere—”

“Can you give the talk?” Tyler interrupted. 

“Shit, already?” 

“It’s better when they’re sober.” 

Josh sighed and marched into the living room. “Okay, assholes,” he barked, silencing the room. “On behalf of Tyler and Tyler’s lovely family, I’m gonna lay down a couple rules. Stay out of his parent’s room and don’t open anything without Tyler’s permission. You can smoke in the backyard but you can’t play music out there past sundown. Also, please don’t fuck in the house. Yeah, the guestroom is open but it’s reserved for people who need a large bowl and place to lie down. Got it?”

People seemed to get it. 

“Cool.” Josh ducked back into the kitchen. 

“Sick,” Brendon mumbled, plopping down on the ottoman with his rolled up sleeping bag in one hand and a Whiteclaw in the other. “Damn, I’m excited for this. It’s been too long since we’ve all gotten together and done something nice like this, you know?”

“We go to school together, Brendon,” Tyler mused, knocking him around with a pillow. 

“And to be clear,” Frank piped up, excavating himself from Gerard’s mouth for just a second. “The last time we did something “nice” like this, I woke up with a tattoo, and I distinctly remember Lindsey saying you gave it to me.”

“Can confirm,” Lindsey added. 

“Okay, maybe getting pre-stoned before going to a Bluegrass festival was overkill, I’ll admit that. But I bet that’s the only tattoo you’ve ever gotten that didn’t hurt one bit.”

“Yeah, but it’s on my ass, Brendon!” Frank shot back. 

Tyler opted out of this conversation and brought all of the sleeping bags back into his room one by one. Each time he entered the living room, the group seemed to be on a completely different topic. One time it was “why Pete is called Bone Daddy” and the next it was on the ethics of cannibalism and the last time Tyler decided to risk his sanity, it was along the lines of Oasis versus Blur. 

“How are the cupcakes coming along?” Tyler asked, emerging into the kitchen. It was just him and Josh and quite frankly, it was calming. 

Josh laughed quietly. “Very nicely.”

Tyler trusted his opinion and sunk down onto the floor. Josh passed him some Whole Foods variety Whiteclaw and nudged him. 

“You’ve got your worried face on,” he muttered, vigorously stirring red dye into the frosting. 

“No, I don’t,” Tyler replied. The drink tasted like La Croix but spiked. It made him feel like a Karen. 

“Yes, you do.”

“Do not.”

“Do too.”

“Do not.”

“Do too, and move because I need to check the cabinet,” Josh said, turning to face him. 

“You don’t need to ask to get in between my legs,” Tyler replied, scooting away. 

“Consent is important, Tyler,” Josh replied, a smile in his voice. 

Tyler grinned behind his fake Whiteclaw. Maybe it was the stress, but he was only ¾ of the way in and was already feeling a buzz. 

“So why do you have your worried face on?” Josh asked again. 

“I’m starting to think it’s just my normal face.”

Josh stopped beating the shit out of the icing and slid down next to Tyler. He just stared until Tyler caved.

“Oh my fucking God, fine!” Tyler laughed. “Tell me, what about this was a good idea?”

Josh burst out laughing. “Probably none of it, but that’s exactly why we’re doing it.”

Tyler finished off the can and tossed it into the recycle. Surprisingly, he made the shot. “I just don’t want to be the mom friend or have this end horribly, y’know? Hayley already asked me if we’re fucking.”

“Yeah, but that’s why I’m here,” Josh replied.

“For fucking?”

“For moral support.”

“The only way you’d leave this house is if I killed you and dragged your cold, dead corpse out of these walls.”

“I look forward to that day, immensely,” Josh replied, his eyes getting all dark and mysterious. Tyler could tell he was joking, but sometimes he genuinely wondered if he could be more in love. “But what’d you say to Hayley?”

“I told her to find me when I’m shitfaced, and you know she’ll hold me to that. And then I’ll probably tell her. Sorry.”

“Ha! Good luck defining our relationship, buddy. I don’t think I could do that sober.” He kissed Tyler after a minute. It was an odd moment only made weirder when screaming erupted from the living room. 

It was a happy birthday chant, loud and proud. 

“Are the cupcakes ready?” Tyler asked, still only centimeters away from Josh’s mouth. 

“It’s show time.”

Josh went out into the living room to make the “happy birthday, you’re so important and we love you, so we decided to remind you how much you mean to us” speech while Tyler lit the candles. He thought the red frosting-writing on the cupcakes turned out nice. 

He came out on cue and delivered the platter of cupcakes to Frank just as soon as everyone finished drunkenly singing happy birthday for the second time. Frank blew out the candles and then turned to read the cupcakes. Each one had a letter, and together they spelled out: U AINT SHIT :)

A couple had pumpkins on them. It was endlessly amusing.

Once everyone remembered how to breathe, the eating and drinking continued in the fashion of what felt like a norse feast. Tyler had two more Whiteclaws, celebrating how perfect the look on Frank’s face had been. Now that that was out of the way, he had no more responsibilities until someone inevitably hurled. He got swept up in the tide of people migrating to the backyard. 

“It’s real stoner hours, ladies and gentlemen!” Brendon shouted.

Tyler launched his half empty can at Brendon’s face and clocked him square in the jaw. “We have neighbors! Shut the fuck up!” 

Brendon did not shut up, but someone cranked up the music and it helped drown him out. Tyler watched him slowly go off the rails from a safe distance.

Tyler noticed his sway was slightly off-beat from the music. He felt sorta loose and floppy, and the sun both warmed his skin and hurt his eyes. It was at this moment that he realized he was drunk and it was all uphill from there. 

He was normally antisocial and didn’t mind it in the slightest. But as he danced around in the sharp sunlight with twenty of his closest friends to music he didn’t know, maybe that changed a little. Maybe when Brendon jumped on his back, Tyler didn’t feel the weight. Perhaps when Meagan crashed into him, knocking them both to the ground, he didn’t mind. Maybe he laughed about it with her. It’s even possible that when Josh pulled him inside for a minute and kissed him into the floor, he wished they were outside, in the middle of that reverberating audience. 

“We’re being fishy,” Tyler mumbled. He could barely talk due in part to how drunk he was, but mostly because he too deep in Josh’s mouth. 

“You’re gonna tell Hayley later, though. Why does it matter?” Josh replied. 

“Because Hayley’s not the only person here!” is what Tyler said. Yes, he meant that answer, but there existed a lot he didn’t say. As Josh said earlier, he definitely _couldn’t_ define their relationship. With that amount of uncertainty, he wouldn’t know what to tell people. What if he said something and Josh felt some other way? And what about the whole ‘coming out’ aspect of it, which was a much longer conversation for a much more sober time. Telling Hayley was going to be more than enough. 

He kissed Josh once more and rolled out from under him. 

Tyler listened to the music from just behind the backyard door. He needed a moment to turn himself off before he went out there. Even drunk, he knew no one needed to see him horny on main. The second before he pushed the door open and let himself out into the world, Josh came up behind him and slid his hands in Tyler’s front pockets. He pressed his lips into Tyler’s neck. 

Tyler’s blood _vibrated_. He melted back onto Josh like he was falling into warm water. Just before he broke the surface, the door burst open, crashing into Tyler and Josh and sending them flying backwards. 

Hayley yelped when she felt the door hit someone. Inside, Tyler and Josh were several feet apart on the floor, flushed and silent. She wasn’t drunk enough to not figure it out. She reached back outside for a bottle and then dragged Tyler into the bathroom with her. 

Once the door was shut and Tyler was vaguely upright, Hayley turned off the overhead light. All that illuminated the room was a string of orange christmas lights strung through the towel racks. The tiled floor they sat on took the heat right out of them, but the slow moving air was warm. 

Hayley took a swig from the bottle and cringed. 

“Need a chaser?” Tyler asked. 

“I would,” Hayley hissed, “if we had one.”

Tyler snickered and pointed to the toilet.

Hayley rolled her eyes. “Gross.” She took another sip and spun the cap back on the bottle. “Okay, so spill. Wait, no—”

Hayley tried to stop Tyler from flipping the bottle over and pouring it all over the floor, but she was much too late. She pulled the rug over the spill and pushed Tyler over. 

“Dickhead,” she muttered, laying next to him. 

Tyler attempted to how to begin the story but he was utterly lost. “So...” he said, in hopes that the words would come to him. “Me and Josh.”

“Yeah. You and Josh.”

“Josh and I.”

“The two of you.”

“Myself and himself.”

“Fucking Christ, Tyler, just tell me.”

“I really don’t know what to say.”

“Are you guys together?” Hayley asked. 

Even something as simple as that was difficult to answer. “We have sex sometimes.”

Hayley’s eyes widened, but she said nothing. Not that Tyler would have noticed either way. 

“And I like him. He’s my best friend,” he said. 

“That you have sex with?”

“Sometimes.” Tyler didn’t like her tone. He expected that she was a skeptic but he didn’t have the energy to fight her on this. “I just—” he huffed. “He’s really funny and I’ve known him forever, and that’s just how it was for the longest time. But…” Tyler paused. “He’s got these really bright eyes. His skin is really warm, even when he says he’s ‘fucking freezing’. He treats me really differently from anyone else. I think everyone sees me the way I see me but he sees me the way I see him.” Tyler swallowed and tried to understand what exactly he’d just said; Hoping desperately that he didn’t get too sentimental. 

“How do you see him?” Hayley asked. She was also trying to figure out what Tyler meant. 

“What?”

“I don’t know. You said he sees you like you see him. How do you see him?”

“Didn’t I already say that?” Tyler asked, confused.

“Maybe. Say it again.”

The ceiling was starting to spin in Tyler’s eyes. “He’s... well, he’s fucking hot.” Tyler couldn’t say anything more and keep his PG rating. 

Hayley snickered. “Good enough. We should probably go back out soon or else everyone will think we’re making out or something.”

Tyler flipped his lid. Hayley didn’t know what she’d said that was funny. 

“That’s exactly what I said to Josh before you pulled me in here,” Tyler laughed. 

Hayley wheezed. “Did I open the door on you two making out?”

_The PG rating!_ Tyler opened and shut his mouth. “Mhm.” Then he looked Hayley in the eyes and that said a little too much. 

“GROSS!”

“How is it gross if we’re drunk? Nothing’s gross when you’re drunk.”

“Not true,” Hayley argued, pushing herself up with one arm. “Horror films? Not gross. People having sex in a doorway with all of their friends on the other side of said door? Yes gross.”

Tyler ignored the ‘having sex part’, because that’s totally _not_ what was happening. “Speaking of horror movies, we should probably start watching some or the whole night will go to waste.”

Hayley gave him a hand up and they were both surprised to see he could stand—and walk!—on his own. Josh was waiting where they left him and the three of them returned together to the backyard. 

“Host is back!” Brendon howled. A chorus of hoots went up in celebration. 

“Tyler,” Ray slurred, “your drinks are seriously not festive.” 

“What did you want, pumpkin spice vodka?” Gerard teased. 

“It would’ve been nice, is all I meant…”

“I can call Jimmy, if you’d like,” Lindsey broke in, not giving Tyler a single second to think. “He could cook us up some witches brew.”

“NO!” Gerard called out. The look on his face had become indisputably sober and critical. 

Lindsey—who unlike Tyler and most of the party, hadn’t jumped at the shout—didn’t seem pressed. “Why not?”

“God, she never thinks things through, does she?” Hayley asked herself quietly. 

Whatever that meant, Tyler didn’t want to know. He stepped an inch closer to Josh for support. 

Gerard finally stopped staring and used his words. “Because if you invite Jimmy, he’ll bring his friends too.”

“You could stop this, you’re the host,” Hayley said to Tyler, a note of anxiety in her voice. 

The conversation was moving too fast for Tyler to ask ‘stop what?’, so he ignored her and kept listening. He caught Lindsey’s reaction to Gerard’s comment firsthand and Tyler watched her go from confusion to comprehension to the unmistakable look of _aw, shit_.

“What’s wrong with his friends? They’re all right to me,” put in Meagan. 

“God, what is she saying?” Hayley hissed. Tyler thought she sounded like a sports commentator. 

“Well, Meagan,” Frank spat, definite ferocity in his voice, “to be perfectly clear, Jimmy will bring Bert.”

This levelled the conversation. No one looked eager to reply and even though the music still blasted from the speaker, it was deathly quiet. Until Tyler asked,

“Who’s Bert?”

Tyler honestly didn’t think he’d said anything wrong until he gauged everyone’s reaction. Lindsey flat out cringed at him. Tyler _knew_ he’d said something very wrong when he looked at Gerard and saw Frank standing behind him, seething like a rabid dog. Gerard’s expression said it was a story too often told and he was tired of telling it because it hurt every time. That look was worse. 

“I think it’s movie time, yeah?” said Josh, saving Tyler from certain death.

There was a stampede to get away from the awkwardness. 

~

Tyler and Josh squished into a chair together in the farthest, darkest corner of the living room. This way, no one could see them without having to turn around and Tyler could monitor the entire room too. He had Spencer’s air horn, should the PDA police be required. Josh had already set the rules, now it was Tyler’s job to enforce them. 

The rest of the room was rearranged as well, with the couch pushed as far opposite the TV as possible, to give people a good amount of space to lay their sleeping bags on. Ten or so people crammed together on the ground to watch the movie, with the rest on the couch. Of course, the curtains were drawn and the lights were off. 

The movie screen made everyone in the room look like moths, Tyler observed mid-movie. They all stared at the screen like it was the bright light at the end of the tunnel. Even when that bright light depicted brutal homicide. 

Tyler shifted onto Josh’s lap while everyone was engrossed in the movie. Josh hugged Tyler’s middle the whole time. Tyler always knew when the movie was too intense for Josh because he would press little kisses into Tyler’s neck instead of looking at the screen. With thirty minutes left in the runtime, Josh called for pizza. It arrived before the end of the movie but no one really cared. 

Post-pizza break they returned to the living room to continue the binge. First movie ended. Tyler thought it was pretty average, being that it was a true crime story. His scary movie taste tended to drift more toward supernatural horror, rather than just a man in a mask with a knife. 

“Can we watch one that’s actually interesting? With demons and shit?”

“ACTUALLY INTERESTING?” Frank shrieked, extremely offended. 

“He said what he said,” Josh shrugged. Josh really shouldn’t have spoken up because now everyone was hyper aware that Tyler was definitely on his lap. And he couldn’t shift him away now because that would make it even more obvious. 

“Yeah,” Tyler added on, “you can only watch Jamie Lee Curtis run from that masked dude for so long.”

“THAT MASKED DUDE?” Frank was in agony. “YOU MEAN MICHAEL FUCKING MYERS?” 

Tyler shrugged and Gerard had to physically restrain Frank. “Personally, ghost movies are way scarier. Why don’t we watch, like, The Shining or The Conjuring?”

“Oh, you want ghosts? I’ll give you ghosts, motherfucker.” Frank stood up heatedly and immediately dropped. So instead he crawled over to his backpack, and even that was a little wobbly. He dragged himself back to the living room with a cloth parcel pressed to his chest. He dropped it on the ground and everyone crowded around to watch him unwrap it.

It was a Ouija board. 

“FUCK. THAT.” Ryan vaulted off the couch, ran into the other room and did not come back. 

“Damn,” Brendon muttered, thinking no one would hear him. “There goes my chance at getting laid.” 

“WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU SAY?” Jon shouted, confirming everyone had in fact heard Brendon correctly and they weren’t hallucinating that. 

“I was kidding!” Brendon tried to laugh it off, but no one bought it. 

“Yeah, I’m with Ryan on this one, though,” Ray agreed. “It’s not like I’m worried someone will get possessed, ‘cause that’s dumb. I’d just rather not take that chance.”

“And what would be so wrong with getting possessed?” Frank asked. “What’s the worst thing that could happen?”

“Every time someone has to ask that, _everyone_ ends up dead,” Ray replied. 

“Dunno…” Brendon piped up. “Possession can be kinda… sexy.”

“JENNIFER’S BODY IS NOT REAL LIFE, BRENDON!” Ryan yelled from the other room. 

Josh elbowed Tyler. “Your house, your call.”

“You say that like it’s even a question. But we gotta put the epicenter in my room ‘cause I don’t think the living room is the best place for a séance,” Tyler said. 

Frank scooped up the Ouija board and Ray scooped up Frank. Josh and Tyler grabbed candles, Lindsey shut the curtains in Tyler’s room, and everyone else pushed the furniture to the walls. The circle was knee-to-knee and waiting by the time Josh and Tyler got there with armfulls of candles. 

Ryan stood in the doorway with his arms crossed. 

“Join us, Ry!” Spencer pleaded. 

“No fucking way. I really don’t need to add an exorcism to my to do list.”

“Ryan, come here,” Brendon demanded in that whiny, bitchy voice he used to get what he wanted. And it worked like a charm. 

Ryan rolled his eyes but sat down next to Brendon without complaint. He looked white as a sheet until Brendon wrapped an arm around him and then his face flushed with color. 

Tyler and Josh shared a look and returned to lighting the candles. 

“Very spooky,” Brendon affirmed. “But I think we need a little incense to seal the deal.” 

“Oh, good ide—” Tyler stopped when Brendon pulled out a joint and lit it.

“No smoking ins—” Tyler cut Josh off because Brendon was right. Why not make things a little more interesting?

“I can just air the house out. It doesn’t really matter,” Tyler said. 

“Thank you, Tyler. Someone who finally understands,” Brendon gloated. He winked as he blew out smoke. 

Josh pretended not to be miffed by slinging an arm casually around Tyler’s shoulders, but everyone, Tyler included, knew that wasn’t what it looked like. Tyler shrugged off the arm and motioned for Frank to begin. 

“Commence!” Frank proclaimed, throwing his arms up in the air. He set the planchette on the board and straightened up as best he could for someone who was noticeably wasted.

The candles flickered from the force of Frank’s breath. The room slowly filled with smoke as the weed was passed around, twisting and churning like a low hanging fog. It was thin enough to not be overwhelming but it writhed like it had soul and every so often Tyler would see it move out of the corner of his eye and mistake it for a person. 

“What should we ask first?” asked Brendon, eerily transfixed on the board. 

“Oh, got one,” Frank said after thinking a moment. “Everyone put a hand on the planchette.”

“On the what?” asked at least nine people. 

“On the plant-shit,” Brendon whispered, so high he could barely blink. 

“The little thingy in the middle of the board. Put a hand on it,” Frank insisted.

With so many people in the circle, this was not thought out well and not very practical. After much grumbling and three near-death experiences involving candles, they were situated well enough.

“Is anyone here with us?” Frank asked.

“Yea, like twenty people, dipshit,” Spencer snickered. 

Frank used his free hand to clap the back of Spencer’s neck so hard that he exorcized Spencer right out of his body. “Be quiet, I was asking the ghosts.”

“Wanna become one?” Gerard asked, looking like a phantom himself; his dark hair and clothes looking like darkness grabbing him while in sharp contrast to his pale skin. His cobwebs of blood vessels glowed orange in the candle light. 

Spencer looked too scared to answer. Anything he might have thought to say was wiped clean away when the planchette began to move. 

It slid across the board so slowly that no one could be sure it wasn’t the automatic twitch of someone’s fingers or their anticipation unknowingly moving it forward. The room was dead silent except for the scratching of the planchette against the wooden board. 

The planchette stopped dead over the ‘No”. 

Frank sat back and scrunched up his nose. “Um.”

“Maybe they’re shy,” Tyler whispered. 

Lindsey poured some wax from a candle into her palm and smeared it around. “But it definitely moved, there’s no question about that.”

“Should we go again?” Jon asked. 

“We can’t, the board said no.” Frank looked disappointed. 

“It was fun while it lasted,” Josh sighed, breaching the circle. 

“Wait, don’t—” Ryan looked ready to shit himself. “That’s… I don’t think you’re supposed to leave the circle without disbanding. Properly.”

Josh froze and looked around nervously. 

“Well, what’s done is done,” Spencer sighed. He got up and threw open the curtains, expecting a sunset that would rationalize everyone in the way that sunlight somehow did. Instead, the sky was perfectly dark and the crescent moon shone in through the windows, seeming to smile. 

Frank could tell exactly who was scared by who pulled out their phones. And of the people who definitely were not freaked out, Gerard was easily the most content. Frank waited until everyone was either engrossed in their phones or transfixed on the moon before pulling Gerard in. It was perfectly Jack and Sally. 

And since no one was watching, Frank wrapped a hand around Gerard’s neck and dug his nails into the soft skin. It was purely on impulse and he immediately felt weird about it but Gerard moaned into his mouth. Then Frank had intentions. 

He couldn’t talk because they were maybe a foot from a person in every direction and any quiet, breathy words would be too suspect. He had to improvise. He bit Gerard’s lip and pulled back just long enough to share a look. 

Gerard’s eyes were black in the dim light but barely open. The drugs and the kissing had opposing effects on him that meshed into a feeling of sedation. It was dark. Frank’s hand was still on his neck. Their lips lingered a mere inch apart. In leaning back in, Gerard wordlessly said that during a better moment, there would be a dark, lonely corner of the house waiting for them. 

Josh—too stoned to look away—witnessed everything between Frank and Gerard and finally had enough. He grabbed the planchette and shoved it between their mouths, just to make them stop. In that, he had an idea. 

“Eureka,” he whispered, staring at the planchette in his hands. Then louder, “HEY! YOU GUYS EVER PLAYED THAT KISSING GAME WHERE YOU PASS THE THING BETWEEN YOUR MOUTHS?” 

Josh felt like he’d tapped into something primal, what with the overwhelming commendation he got for suggesting the game. Really, he’d only advocated for people to be horny on main. Oh, well. It wasn’t like he was exempt. 

The circle was resurrected minus Frank and Gerard, since they were in a “committed relationship” or whatever. Supposedly Pete and Meagan were too, but neither of them mentioned that at all. Ryan looked horrified at the use of the planchette, but even he was sitting in the circle. 

“Enjoy your sexually transmitted demons,” Gerard snickered, sat upon the bed with Frank. 

“Can’t you be a voyeur silently?” demanded Brendon.

“I never said I was going to watch!” 

“Yeah, but since you can’t fuck Frank in front of us, you’ve got nothing better to do.”

“Who’s the voyeur now?” Gerard raised an eyebrow. 

Brendon sunk into the floor while everyone howled with laughter. He laid there, contemplating his life choices, until everyone screamed at him to take the planchette from Lindsey. He dropped it. And he had to suffer the consequences too. The consequences tasted like Redbull and vodka, so it wasn’t really that bad. 

After, Brendon passed it successfully to Ryan and Ryan to Meagan and so on. It went round the circle consistently as everyone got progressively more wasted. Pete and Ray made out, which was weirder than any porn Tyler had ever found on the entire internet. Dallon and Spencer did too, but that went overboard really fast and the game nearly had to be canned. 

Then Pete dropped the planchette while passing it to Patrick and suddenly their story was everybody’s gossip again. Pete had taken the “you’re not really friends unless there’s a rumor you’re gay” thing too far in sophomore year and that shit stuck like gum. Eventually the school forgot about it but his friends never did. He knew that. Patrick knew that. So why not partake in a social experiment? Pete thought, grabbing Patrick’s face.

Patrick went into shock the second Pete touched him. That was embarrassing enough without acknowledging how silent everyone had become, yet Patrick noticed that too. He was a hot mess. He only saw one way out of awkwardly staring at Pete until one of them made a move and that was the make the move. Patrick lurched forward and pressed their mouths together. 

He thought it would be weird—kissing his best friend. It wasn’t. Everyone had talked about him and Pete making out and doing worse things with each other so much that even Patrick had imagined it before. The actual act was… underwhelming. The cheering was weird though. Everyone was cheering. 

Pete pulled back and pressed a kiss on Patrick’s nose for comedic effect. 

Patrick, left a tad spacy, made a string of observations: Pete pulled back first. Unusual. Not like Patrick spent a lot of time kissing Pete or watching Pete kiss people, but he was typically an instigator. Meagan looked oddly happy for a girl who just watched her man kiss someone else. She was laughing at someone Brendon said, cup in hand, and a wild happiness in her eyes. Not totally unlike the way Patrick felt when he knew something that he shouldn’t talk about despite it playing perfectly into the conversation. Maybe he was reading between the lines.

His friends were too full of conspiracy, he decided, impressed that for once he wasn’t part of the problem. Until he caught the look in Gerard’s eyes and remembered when they used to kiss like that. Patrick clicked his tongue and slid farther down the wall. 

At this point Dallon was routinely dropping the planchette in order to kiss Spencer and people were getting sick of it. Tyler had to admit it was pretty entertaining to watch goody-two-shoes Dallon risk it all.

Goody-two-shoes Dallon had straddled Spencer’s lap and had both of his hands under Spencer’s shirt. It was still totally funny but it was also a little concerning too. _Exactly how long am I going to allow this?_ Josh wondered. 

“DALLON! I THOUGHT YOU WERE WAITING ‘TILL MARRIAGE—” Brendon screamed. 

_Maybe a couple more minutes._

“HE SAID THAT?” Frank screamed back. 

Brendon crumbled, laughing so hard he was completely silent. For a second it looked like he would be able to answer but he doubled back over and everyone else joined in. Except Dallon, who didn’t stop grinding for a second. 

“We—we shouldn’t make fun of his personal choices,” Patrick said, half laughing, half crying. 

“Dude, I don’t think he can even hear us right now,” Frank wheezed. 

Like the first signal sent from deep space, Dallon flipped the whole circle off. Then he took that same hand and stuck it—

Everyone screamed and Josh promptly ended the game. 

Tyler caved and let Frank pick the second movie but by the time the third one rolled around, he and Gerard had mysteriously disappeared. 

“That’s fine,” Tyler said once someone brought up their absence. “I get to pick the next movie.”

Josh looked grossed-out. “No... that’s not... what I meant.” 

“He means they’re fucking,” clarified Dallon, who had miraculously pried himself from Spencer long enough to get a beer.

“Hey, why don’t you go suck Spencer’s balls and shut the fuck up for a little bit,” Mikey interjected, rubbing his eyes tiredly. 

“What?” Dallon asked, scandalized. He looked genuine. Nobody replied so he sat back down and pounded the beer in thirty seconds flat. 

“Homeboy doesn’t remember jack or shit,” Josh whispered.

“It’s the possession,” Tyler said.

“It’s the possession,” Josh agreed, slouching down in the seat he shared with Tyler, ready to watch the Mikey-Explains-What-Dallon-Did-In-Graphic-Detail show.

From the bathroom where he was wrapping Ryan up with toilet paper, Brendon could hear Dallon yell, “I DID WHAT?”, and wondered what that was about. Nothing more came through the grapevine, so Brendon licked another piece of toilet paper to make it stick to the rest. 

“I really don’t think that’ll work,” Ryan said, ignoring that it had henceforth worked like a charm. 

“What else am I gonna do with all of this spit?” Brendon asked.

“Um…” Ryan’s train of thought crashed head first into the side of a mountain. “Are you gonna throw up or something? I mean, usually that happens… salivation, I mean. Before the throwing up. Um.” 

Brendon threw his head back in exasperation. “God, Ryan, you tell me you’re in love with me ONE TIME and now you’re a blushy mess whenever I flirt with you.” It took awhile for him to register what he said. 

Ryan patiently waited to smack the shit out of him. 

“That was insensitive, wasn’t it?”

“Little bit.”

Brendon pursed his lips, which was about as close as he’d ever come to an apology. “All I meant that we used to joke around all the time, you know? Friends make out all the time, it’s not weird.”

“You’re telling me if I kissed you right now, it wouldn’t be weird?” Ryan asked.It was a tricky question but it had only two outcomes. One, Brendon said no and then Ryan kissed him, or two, Ryan got to use his middle school debate club skills on Brendon’s dumbass. 

Brendon looked boxed. “It would be weird because I’d assume you were doing it because of your feelings. Not because, you know, you’re crossed. If it were the other way around, it wouldn’t be weird, because I don’t… reciprocate.”

_Way to rub it in,_ Ryan wallowed. “So you’re saying if you kissed me, right now, for example, it wouldn’t be weird because we’d both know for sure that it was purely friendly. Not romantic.”

“I wouldn’t call it pure in any way, shape, or form, but sure. Yeah, if I were to kiss you right now, we’d be mutually aware that it’s just because we’re crossed. Nothing else.” Brendon took a step closer. “Right?”

Ryan lowered the toilet paper from his mouth. “Right.” 

And as a good friend would, Brendon closed the gap. He was right— it definitely wasn’t pure. 

Behind the shower curtain, Hayley turned silently to Lindsey. “I think they forgot we’re here too,” she mouthed. 

Lindsey wrapped an arm around Hayley and pat her gently. “Just let it happen,” she whispered. “This has been kinda pent up.”

Hayley leaned her head against the stone backsplash and tried to ignore the gross noises echoing around the bathroom. She focused instead on Lindsey’s quiet breathing and the clicks her nails made on the porcelain tub. She was almost at peace with the slurping and moaning when something registered with her. 

“Doesn’t Brendon have a girlfriend?” 

~

Without Frank to argue with, Tyler was free to choose any movie he wanted. Yet without Frank he lacked motivation to actually made a decision and heaped that responsibility onto Josh. Tyler curled up next to him and just as soon as the opening credits rolled, Josh was asleep on his shoulder.

Not particularly interested in the plot of the movie, Tyler looked around. Most of the room was uninteresting, i.e. actually paying attention to the movie. How trivial. Gerard and Frank were absent, but that wasn’t news. Frank’s phone was the only part of them present and it was being blown up by someone named Jamia. Tyler didn’t know who that was, so he moved on. 

Ryan was completely covered in toilet paper and for the first time all night he looked completely comfortable in Brendon’s presence. Tyler hadn’t the slightest idea why, and he didn’t want to know either. 

Dallon was sitting on a chair, cross legged, and he was either extremely perplexed by the plot of the movie or he was still trying to remember why and when he made out with Spencer. Tyler figured the latter, although he hadn’t paid enough attention to the movie to follow along either. 

Meagan and Mikey were laying on either side of Pete but he only had an arm around one of them. 

“Is he asleep?” Tyler asked softly. 

Pete was twirling a strand of Mikey’s hair around his finger. “He’s not used to partying with the big kids.”

Tyler smiled and half looked away. It could’ve been the light, Tyler told himself, or Pete actually kissed the top of Mikey’s head. Either way, it was better to give them their peace, he decided. 

Right on cue to disturb the peace, in marched Frank and Gerard. They tried to be subtle about it, like they’d just naturally slip into the crowd and be looked over. 

Spencer started clapping. “We should clap, right? I feel like we should clap.”

Tyler snickered. “We should definitely clap.”

Spencer checked his phone. “Oh, yeah. Fifty-seven minutes? We better be clapping!”

Frank hid his face in his hands. “You’re a sick man, Smith.”

Gerard was just glad Mikey was asleep. 

“Have you nothing to say for yourselves?” Josh asked. He’d awoken when the clapping began. “You broke the rules.”

“Pics or it didn’t happen—” Frank started. Gerard waved him off.

“Please,” he rolled his eyes. “Cocktober only comes once a year.”

“Yeah, but clearly you sure don’t.” Honest to God, Patrick had meant to say that quietly. 

The room _exploded_. Tyler had to leave the room to stop laughing. He could feel the heat from the roast coming off of his skin. Gerard didn’t recover. 

Josh found Tyler in the stairwell, still snickering at Gerard’s complete annihilation. 

“I bet you didn’t think that your Halloween party would end up with someone being actually fucking killed,” Josh snickered, leaning on the banister. 

“That was almost funny enough to make me forget that I’ll have to clean up their mess tomorrow,” Tyler sighed. 

Jos really tried to unhear that. “I’m tired of horny people,” he said. “Can’t they just go to bed?”

Tyler pointed at Mikey in the living room. Despite the yelling, he was still out. And behind him Dallon was yawning and Brendon was unrolling his sleeping bag. “I think they’re trying.” 

Josh checked his phone. “It’s fucking midnight, they better be.”

_What?_ Tyler wondered. He didn’t know where the time had gone, but midnight was a pretty spooky hour in and of itself. He snatched a blanket from his bed and pulled Josh downstairs. “Come on, it’s the witching hour.”

Tyler was glad he brought the blanket because it was colder than a witch’s teat outside. The moon was absent from the sky, leaving the backyard swathed in darkness. Cold and scared, Tyler huddled close to Josh under the blanket. 

Josh lit and passed Tyler a joint he’d stolen from Brendon at some point. They shotgunned the smoke back and forth while the wind whipped around them. 

“Success?” Josh asked during a longer beat of silence. 

“I think so. No one puked.”

“And this is nice,” Josh noted. “This moment right here.”

“Yeah,” Tyler smiled at the darkness. “This too.” He pressed a kiss onto Josh’s shoulder let the wind blow the joint out, like the cleansing smoke of sage dissipating in a cursed home.

_This is probably where I’d tell him I love him,_ Tyler thought. _If that’s the sort of thing I want to say._ Was it? 

“So you told Hayley, right?” Josh asked. “About us?”

Tyler was torn straight out of his thoughts. “Oh, uh, yeah. I did.”

Josh took a hit. “What’d she say?”

“I told her that I care about you. And that you’re my best friend and that I wouldn’t have been able to do this or most other things without you. Which is all true.”

Josh sent Tyler a look out of the corner of his eyes. “I asked what _she_ said.”

Tyler felt like puking for the first time all night. Then Josh started to laugh at him and the sensation faded. Not just the nausea, but every other bad thing too. Tyler cracked a smile and shook his head. 

He had to clear his throat before trying to say anything. Even then, a laugh or two slipped through. “She didn’t say anything, really. She said that people would think she and I were making out if we stayed in there too long, which is exactly what—”

“—Exactly what I said,” Josh snickered. “And I had a point, although I’m kinda enjoying this too much to care.”

“Well, I think we’re locked out, so you’re gonna have to enjoy it for a little longer.” Tyler tried the door handle and yes, they were definitely locked out. 

“You’re a nightmare, Tyler.” 

“Whatever. Happy Halloween.” Tyler kissed him. And while they kissed, Tyler got to thinking. Josh really did have just the brightest eyes. And even in the wind, his skin was warm and pressed against Tyler it felt amazing. 

“Hey—” Josh pulled back suddenly. “If the only way back in is through the front door, wanna go scare the fuck out of everyone?”

Tyler cracked a grin. “You read my mind.” It wasn’t the first time, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

**Author's Note:**

> leave a comment if you enjoyed!


End file.
